FUCK TICKETMASTER (Rant)

Sendbeer, 10 months ago

Adam Conover just did a video on mega mergers and Ticketmaster was prominently featured. I thought it was pretty well done, but hope you like the guy because he takes his personality to 11 on this one.

Fuck these monopoly fucks.

CraigeryTheKid, 10 months ago

I know exactly what you mean with Adam. I do like him, and his content, but wow yeah his “brand” of engagement can be exhausting.

SoylentBlake, 10 months ago

Adam was touring his comedy set recently, outside Ticketmaster, which is next to impossible to do.

I got mad respect for the guy, actually practices what he preaches.

When he goes back on tour; if you see a show in a town you know people, help spread the word for him, since he’s doing it all homegrown.

PP_BOY_, 10 months ago

Plenty of artists tour outside of Ticketmaster, just not big ones. The best thing to do is find a venue near you that isn’t owned by LiveNation and follow them on social media/subscribe to their mailing list.

SoylentBlake, 10 months ago

As I’ve always done, being an elder millennial. In the olden days yonder we had to bookmark individual webpages and create rss feeds, but even rss didn’t emerge until like the mid aughties. AOL had been around 10 years and damn near died by then, sames as yahoo.

I miss the old Internet. Sigh

adespoton, 10 months ago

The fall of the old Internet was when AOL, CompuServe and Prodigy got peering rights and Classmates.com started up.

That said, I do most of my shopping online now and have likely saved years of my life due to not having to hunt through stores only to find they could “order it in” for me.

And I’ve never used TicketMaster since they went online, and don’t feel like I’m missing anything. I prefer smaller venues.

SoylentBlake, 10 months ago

I feel ya about the savings. Almost everything I buy is shopped around AliExpress, Amazon, eBay, Craigslist then local. The trick is figuring out if the physical stores are passing any of its wholesale bulk savings to you.

Usually, that’s a laughable assumption, but some things, like individual plumbing or electrical parts, just go to the big box (except for anything copper, it’s like half the price online).

Tractor Supply has a decent amount of items at margin. By that I mean, like 15%. Which is way more than most places.

dingus, 10 months ago

Sounds like everyone should have listened to Pearl Jam thirty years ago when Tickermaster wasn’t a complete monopoly.

Disgusted_Tadpole, 10 months ago

Idk if it’s possible, but you could try saying you’re now a EU citizen and you want all you data and everything related to you deleted, according to GDPR laws.

MagneticFusion, 10 months ago

I requested a data deletion according to California laws but we shall see how they handle that considering they have not responded to me at all

miss_brainfart, 10 months ago

Wow, even Discord is nice enough to have the Clyde Bot respond

Atemu, 10 months ago

Do California’s laws not allow you to sue for such violations?

In the EU the company has 30 days to comply and af they don’t, you can sue for damages IIRC.

WaxedWookie, 10 months ago

Assuming you don’t live in California, and can’t follow through on your threats, you’re better off using GDPR - it’s got more teeth.

Also feel free to harass them on whatever public forum works for you and contact their exec via LinkedIn.

LUHG_HANI, 10 months ago

I’ve been to a lot of events the past 2 years and ticket master are the only one to fuck up. They changed the event location and said in the app the tickets would update. They never did. Never got a refund as it was a bank holiday weekend and that’s apparently my fault.

Absolute scum cunts.

LoraxEleven, 10 months ago

Preach that shit.

Fucking cunts are worthless. Haven’t used that shit since I got deployed to the Middle East in 1996; three days before the KISS concert we payed out the ass for and they wouldn’t refund our tickets. One of the very top shitty corporations on Earth. Nobody should ever use them or any of their relative companies.

reddthat_209, 10 months ago

I personally haven’t gone to concerts anymore because of ticketmaster & ticket costs, no thanks, I’m good.

krolden, 10 months ago

bars/clubs that take cash at the door still exist

laconicsoftware, 10 months ago

Dont know about where you’re from but when someone says concert they usually mean large production in an arena or other large seating capacity venue. Not something that is held at bars. I’d call something I go to at a bar a “show”.

MedicPigBabySaver, 10 months ago

Agree. My GF and I go to plenty of “shows”.

The handful of bigger venues we attend sell tickets directly. Like Tanglewood or Boston Symphony Hall.

krolden, 10 months ago

yeah true

RQG, 10 months ago

Really depends on the genre of music you are into. If you enjoy some obscure shit then somesitmes bar concert is as big as it gets. But you are of course correct for all popular music genres.

mihor, 10 months ago

Popular is mostly shit. I went to Joe Satriani years ago, it was not in an arena but a small(ish) sports hall. Best concert ever. I was expecting a lot more audience, though, since Joe is basically one of the best guitarists.

loutr, 10 months ago

A concert is a “live music performance in front of an audience”. It’s a type of show. A dude with a guitar playing songs in a bar is a concert. Lots of professional artists play in smaller venues like bars in a dedicated room, and that’s the best kind of concerts IMO.

triclops6, 10 months ago

Everyone should do this, let the whale die, small venues and direct to customer sales only

I lol at ticket prices now

Uncle_Bagel, 10 months ago

Even putting the vertical monopoly aside, their app is straight up useless and doesn’t work. I spent 3 hours trying to buy tickets for a show today and the app first wouldn’t let me log in, then it wouldn’t let me put in a pre-sale code to get discountes tickets, then it crashed multiple times on the payment page. So not only are they the only place to buy tickets to a lot of shows, they make it almost impossible to actually buy the tickets from their own freaking service.

Elektrobank, 10 months ago

But they will gladly resell you the tickets they sold themselves for 10X face value

MDKAOD, 10 months ago

Big bank bots are buying up the tickets for credit card points redemption, which is why the site gets ddos’ed, causing the site to not work for regular users. Credit card companies are listing the tickets for resale at the inflated rates their customer points are equated to.

Banks have found another avenue of profit in this.

fschaupp, 10 months ago

Sounds to me, like a report to the GDPR – Supervisory authority would be a great option.

Mugmoor, 10 months ago

You have other options thankfully. If you’re in a large city, you can often find small independent retailers which sell tickets. When I lived in Toronto I used to go to a record shop to buy mine.

You can also go to the venue directly. Oftentimes if it’s a smaller venue they’ll have tickets available as well. Stadiums usually don’t go this route, but it’s worth a shot.

Lastly there are other online retailers for tickets like stubhub.com

Ticketmaster is a goddamn scam. The entire industry knows it, but it makes money for the labels so they tolerate it. There’s a reason Taylor Swift and The Cure have been making a big stink about them lately. I personally won’t go to a concert if Ticketmaster is the only retailer, but I’m fortunate that most bands I see play in smaller venues.

scytale, 10 months ago

Stubhub, Seatgeek, etc. tack on their own fees as well. There’s really no escape especially for large venues (arenas, stadiums) where they have a monopoly on ticket selling. Thankfully the 2 local small venues in my city where most of the acts I follow go to still use a different ticketing vendor and you can also still buy at the box office.

PP_BOY_, 10 months ago

EventBrite and eTix ftw

SoylentBlake, 10 months ago

Ticketmaster is known for having clauses that prohibit venues from using any other service, so the joint is either a Ticketmaster venue or independent.

So saying there are other options it’s optimistic at best. Every year those options dwindle.

Fuck Ticketmaster, that’s bully pulpit shit. Market manipulation.

yoppa, 10 months ago

I stopped going to concerts years ago. What a peaceful life. Wish I knew it before.

reddthat_209, 10 months ago

Amen brotha, same here!

Someonelol, 10 months ago

These days many websites outright block anyone using Tor from browsing them. They want their precious visitor data for resale to advertisers even if many of them block their ads anyway.

01189998819991197253, 10 months ago

Dude! I was on this rant a few months ago, too! May their business die, and their pockets (and bank accounts) empty for their shitty monopolistic behaviors.

By the way, the added 20$ is considered a bait and switch, since they don’t tell you right away, and wait until checkout. That’s illegal. But they’re big enough that the laws don’t apply, it seems.

ZombieTheZombieCat, 10 months ago

I just noticed the other day that when I clicked on a seat I wanted, it took me to another page where it had a toggle to turn on “show ticket prices with fees included.” I bet that’s how they get around that. I even thought when I saw it how shady that is because it only shows up after you’ve already found a seat you’re interested in, but you’re not quite at the checkout yet. It somehow makes it worse because it’s so fucking blatant.

01189998819991197253, 10 months ago

Super shady move by them, for sure. I got tickets from them once. So long as I can, never again!

mathemachristian, 10 months ago

The service ticketmaster offers is not selling you tickets, the service is to the producers, artists etc. They get a huge cut off the sales and even get to choose what bullshit fees ticketmaster can use when selling their tickets, but ticketmaster gets the hate for it and they are still in the clear with their fans.

Ticketmaster is the apron these people use to keep themselves clean of the hate while they squeeze every last dime out of their fans pockets.

gamermanh, 10 months ago

No, Ticketmaster is most certainly to blame as their massive control over venues and ticket sales makes artists bend over to their demands as well

brimnac, 10 months ago

“Why not both.”

Hacksaw, 10 months ago

Remember when Fucking Pearl Jam tried to avoid Ticketmaster because of their scummy shit and even tried to sue them and failed.

Pepperidge farm remembers news.yahoo.com/1994-pearl-jam-took-ticketmaster-2…

Ticketmaster isn’t just a front for shitty artists because then artists trying to not be shitty wouldn’t have a problem.

Auzy, 10 months ago

I didn’t realise these turds were sh** worldwide (can confirm they are rubbish in Australia). If thats the most of your concerns, its not much. The fact they operate their own dodgy ticket scalping reselling website online for double-cuts, is enough for me to avoid them

VolunTerry, 10 months ago

Absolutely rubbish company that has nearly cornered the market on venues artists and events and made the entire process of engaging with live entertainment worse and worse as time goes on.

The awful practices of Ticketmaster/Livenation are many, including many things others have already listed as well as an increasing phase-out out of cash and other anonymous payment methods throughout the entire process, including at the actual participating venues themselves.

SamboT, 10 months ago

So why exactly are venues forced to use ticketmaster? I don’t understand. Does everyone involved in the show just get more money when ticketmaster is bleeding customers dry with fees? Are there not other simple payment processors that can be used instead?

antiabed, 10 months ago

Basically all major and non-major acts are exclusively signed with Livenation, because all venues are Livenation. And all venues are Livenation because all major and non-major artists are signed there exclusively.

SamboT, 10 months ago

So artists will find that if they want to play at a large venue, they will need to sign with livenation because the venue has?

And venues sign with livenation because a lot of artists are signed with livenation and they want good artists?

And they don’t really care after they sign because now the requirement to sign with livenation is a burden of whoever isn’t signed with livenation?

And the only person who really loses is the customer?

mihor, 10 months ago

The customer always has. Caveat emptor.

antiabed, 10 months ago

That’s about correct, yeah